No Knead | Homemade Bread Recipe

You too can easily bake your own bread in a few steps.

There are so many reasons to do it !!

It's easy, it tastes better, it is healthier, and it will save you money (At home, we use unbleached organic flour and with other ingredients in the math, it still only costs us 60 cents per loaf!)

This recipe is quick and easy to follow, and can easily be adapted to camping...

Step 1: What You Need | Ingredients and Tools

Equipment :

• Kitchen Scale
• Cast Iron Pot (large enough to contain a big bread of course...)
• Measuring Cup
• Measuring Spoons
• Large mixing bowl

Ingredients

• 1 Tablespoon of Salt
• 1 Tablespoon Dry Yeast
• 907 grams (about 3 cups) Unbleached White Flour
• 680ml of Water

Step 2: Prepare the Dough (5-10 Minutes)

1. Weigh the flour and put it in the mixing bowl
2. Pour salt on it, and gently cover with flour.
   ...It is crucial that the yeast does not directly touches the salt...
3. Sprinkle yeast on top
4. Gently pour the water in the bowl.
5. Start gently mixing, pulling the bottom on top.
6. The dough is ready when it becomes not so sticky, holds it's shape and start looking like a little cushion.
7. Cover with a clean the bowl with a clean towel and let the dough rise for at least 30-45 minutes.

Step 3: Preheat the Oven

Put the cast-iron pot (with lid on) and preheat the oven up to 440° fahrenheit (225° Celcius).

This takes about 15-20 minutes depending on your oven.

Step 4: Split the Dough in Half (5 Minutes)

This recipe makes 2 medium loaves of bread. This means that one dough preparation can last a few days (depending how much you eat!). The other half of the dough can last a couple of days, store in a tupperware on the kitchen counter. If you have a big enough cast-iron pot, you can of course make a very big loaf following same instructions but skipping this step.

1. Put a dash of flour in the middle of the dough (to prevent stickiness). Gently separate the dough in half, making sure the two halves don't touch each other.
2. After putting a about a fifth of a cup of flour on the counter, slowly take out one half and gently start folding the sides of the bread towards the bottom. This traps the air inside the dough. Just make sure you don't overwork it.

Step 5: The Baking !

Be careful manipulating the cast-iron pot, it's incredibly hot!

• When oven reaches desired temperature, put your worked dough in the cast-iron and and sure to cover with the lid.
• After 33 minutes --> take off the lid and put back in the oven for 20 minutes.
• When bread is ready, put on a oven grid so it doesn't become moist and wait for it to cool down before cutting yourself a slice... it's worth the wait!

Comments

[RichardK43]

I'm not sure why this is being referred to as "no-knead" bread. In between where it says "start gently mixing, pulling the bottom on top" and where it says "the dough is ready when..." what you're doing is called kneading.

To reduce the anxiety of anyone who tries this, it's actually not at all crucial that the salt and yeast don't touch. Doesn't matter in the slightest. When I make bread I add them right on top of each other. Salt does not kill yeast on contact. However, you definitely DON'T want to use sea salt here: the coarser the granulation of the salt, the worse the bread will end up. Larger crystals have a harder time fully incorporating into the dough. If the salt doesn't fully incorporate into the dough you'll end up with bread that will, from bite to bite, alternate flavor from insipidly bland to extremely salty.

I disagree slightly with the ratios of flour, water, salt, and yeast. In a nutshell, more flour and water (by about 100 g each), more salt (by about 3-4 g), less yeast (by about 1 g).

The main fault of this bread recipe is that there is no autolyse step, meaning that the gluten development in the final bread will be poor. Also the yeast is given very little time to do its job correctly. The recipe tells you to "trap air" inside the dough in lieu of the yeast doing a good job forming CO2 bubbles inside it. The result is not the same.

What will make this recipe attractive to the aspiring breadmaker is that it "only" takes about 2 hours, as opposed to 5 or 6 if you do it right. However, use this recipe one and discard it: it will help you get familiar with the process, but after you know what you're doing you can do way better than this.

[Pheiso]

Hello Richard, I just saw this message now! Thanks for all the extra info you put there. Referring to ''no-knead'' is my way of saying ''you don't spend two hours working on it'' like everyone thinks. We've been doing this bread for a long time and so far it works very well for us since we always live on the road and on our sailboat in various conditions. But surely there are many ways to do things in life and for sure this method is far from being the only one. This one is good to make bread in a frying pan too! Try it when you go camping :) Enjoy your day, safe journeys